I no longer needed the shard. I knew that Symphe would die of burns and blood loss. I saw some futures where I held onto the shard and it cut my hand badly. There were far fewer futures where I needed it to defend my life. In only a few did Dwalia possess it. A few were too many. I tossed it into the far corner of the cell as Symphe fell, her screams now choked with blood. She sprawled and clutched uselessly at her leaking neck. Her feet were in the burning puddle. She kicked them. I turned from watching her. I already knew what happened next. She was finished.
I knew, too, what I should do next. With every action I took, the best Path grew broader and clearer. This was my true Path. It was nothing like the one the Servants had envisioned.
I stooped to set my cut hand on the surface of the puddle. I drew breath and felt the magic roar into my blood. I felt it join my other magic, the rightful magic of my Farseer blood. The magics twined and danced in me, red and black and silver. I knew the futures and I knew the past.
And I knew I could command people to create the future I desired.
I felt Vindeliar’s power wash over me like a cold wave. A shallow wave. ‘Unchain us,’ he suggested.
I saw his eyes widen as I slowly shook my head. ‘That does not happen,’ I told him gently.
‘Force her!’ Dwalia barked at him, and this time his suggestion was not a wave but a solid slap against all my awareness. It stung, but did not stun. I thought of a little joke. I stooped slowly and picked up the ring of keys. I looked at them. Slack-faced, I held them out toward Dwalia. She lunged. I dropped them, just out of reach. She struggled to get to them, strangling herself against her iron collar.
‘Unlock our chains,’ Vindeliar repeated the words as a command. But I had found my shields and I cut through his feeble suggestion as a ship cuts through water. I smiled at him and sidled closer to Symphe’s unmoving body. I found the dagger at her belt. Its decorated sheath was scorched. I pulled the dagger free of it and put it through my sash. A real weapon. One my father had taught me to use. It felt good. In her pocket I found the other keys on their silver leashes. Those were mine, too.
‘Vindeliar!’ Dwalia rasped at him, her voice hoarse from her bruised throat.
He tried. I felt him shape his power and thrust it at me. It was like a buffet of wind. I smiled at him. I recalled how my father had pushed me away when I had felt the touch of his magic. I imitated that as I looked at Vindeliar and said, ‘Stop that.’
He dropped limply to the floor. Only whites showed in his slitted eyes and his body trembled twice before it was still.
‘Is he dead?’ I heard myself ask aloud.
‘Guards! Guards! Help! Help!’
I had heard Dwalia roar with fury and shout with anger. This was the first time I’d heard her voice ascend to a crescendo of terror.
It took a moment for me to realize that I was what she feared. I stood outside the reach of her chains and knew a moment of panic. Guards would come and I’d be captured. Beaten or killed. No. ‘Stop shouting,’ I said to her. ‘Be quiet.’
And she was, her mouth hanging open. I listened. The dying flames on the oil puddle and on Symphe’s body whispered softly. I heard no guards running, no doors unlocking, nothing. Oh. Of course Symphe would have arranged for them to be away from their posts. I smiled at the work she had done for me.
In that moment of silence, my body shouted at me. I had cuts on the soles of both feet. The cut on my hand stung. I looked at it. It was like a smiling mouth carved across my palm and it was sending a smooth sheet of blood sliding from my hand. With my other hand, I pushed it closed and held it.
Oh. I could do better than that. I felt the severed edges of flesh touch and recall each other. They belonged together. ‘Be together,’ I suggested to them and my body listened. I could almost see the fine net my body wove, like a spider’s web to knit my flesh back together. I limped away from the puddle of serpent spit and the dying flames on the oily pool. I sat down on the floor and regarded my bloody feet. I plucked a shard of glass from my heel. Blood followed it. One by one, I closed each cut. When I stood, I could feel that my feet were newly healed. They hurt, but the sharp jab of pain was gone.
There is no time for this now. Kill her. Flee.
Sssh.
I hushed Wolf Father. This was no forest, but a dungeon in a stronghold. Would I need Dwalia to escape? I considered her.
‘You were never the Unexpected Son!’ she whispered.
‘So I told you, over and over. And still you ruined my life. Took me from my home, killed my friends.’
‘You are the Destroyer. And we brought you here.’
I was surprised. Her words seemed to shimmer with light and truth. I was the Destroyer? My mind leapt back to the forest and to overheard whispers from Reppin and Alaria. I was that?
‘I am,’ I said. As soon as I acknowledged it, that Path unrolled before me. I knew what I would do. It did not feel like a choice as I took the knife from my sash. It was a thing I did in so many possible futures that not doing it did not seem possible. I took a slow step toward her. ‘I am the Destroyer. You not only brought me here, you created me. I was unlikely, almost impossible. Then you came to my home … oh. No.’ I stared at her and saw the path she had left behind her. It was like a snail’s track on a clean swept floor. ‘No. It began years before then. You began to make me when you tormented Beloved.’
She stared at me, her eyes wide. I stepped forward, my knife ready. She slapped my hand, hard, and the knife fell. It clattered on the floor, exactly as I had known it must, making precisely the sound I had expected. I didn’t need a knife. I smiled at her. I pushed into her mind as if it were soft butter and I a hot blade. I spoke my word softly. ‘Die.’
And she did.
She occupied a space in the world. Then she didn’t. I felt the world close up around where she had been. The part of her that had been a living thing became a prelude to earth. Every future that might have sprung from Dwalia living suddenly shrivelled and vanished from the great tapestry of the future. Other gleaming threads writhed in to take their places. They were the futures made possible by her death at this moment. The moment she stopped living, her body began to collapse into something else. I stared at that sack of flesh, wondering how it had held her, and what exactly Dwalia had been. Not the thing that was left behind.
So. That was death. I considered that as I gathered up the brass ring of keys and then Symphe’s knife.
I looked at Vindeliar. Tremors were now running over him, jiggling his cheeks and making his eyeballs twitch. I thought of ending him quickly and decided I wouldn’t. I was still coming to an awareness of what I had done to Dwalia. And to Symphe? I had not felt her death that way. Was it because I’d had a small tie to Dwalia from attempting to manipulate her? Or was it the taint of serpent spit in my flesh? I feared what I might feel if I killed Vindeliar, for we had had a bond of sorts. I left him to die by himself.